BUB Student Brings Value to her Employer with Assignment

As part of her course Project Risk and Cost Management, Hasnae took the opportunity to apply a class project to her intership experience. The result was not only a top-notch project, but real value delivered to her client- in this case, her employer.

The assignment tasked students with researching an company and its industry, identify and assess risks at both the industry and company-specific levels, develop a response plan with contingency planning and risk response control, and make a formal recommendation.

Hasnae is employed by an international company based in Antwerp and Paris. She took the initiative to meet with her company’s general manager on several occasions and delivered the final product to them. Impressed, they took her recommendations into consideration. Here, she answers a few questions on the project.

1) What was the greatest learning that you achieved from this project?

One of the best things I achieved from this project is being able to complete a risk management plan for a company who has great potential but who is facing serious issues which are currently affecting its business. To have the company’s manager and designer approve of my project and take into consideration what I had to say was in itself an achievement for me. I had to take the issues of the company and structure them in a way which was clear, concise, accurate, and well built. It was challenging but once the five projects were complete and all the pieces of the puzzle were put together, I read through all assignments to see whether they all fit together and as I was reading from one assignment to the next, solutions to the issues presented became more and more visible which is the goal of a risk management project. Being able to pinpoint the issues any business is facing and build a plan leading to solving these issues is a great achievement.

2) In what areas would you have done differently if you were starting this project again?

If I could do things differently, I would go into more detail in the project by having several meetings with the general manager in order to understand the details of how they run the company, and more importantly how they deal with issues on the spot. Being able to observe and work on my risk management plan at their office may have given my project the possibility of being more detailed and possibly being able to identify more issues and risks the company is faced with and even come up with better solutions to these issues.

3) How are you taking forward your final recommendations with the company?  (i.e. are you sharing this final report – are you planning to continue to work with them, etc.)

I am going to share my final report with the company. I will be having a meeting to present the rest of my project (since I have already presented them with the first part) and then I will have a third meeting to provide them with a detailed explanation on how they can proceed with the recommendations and how to take action. I will guide them through each step of the risk management plan if they are willing to implement it as soon as possible.

4) What is the most important element that you have in mind about risk management that you will carry over to any future projects that you do?

The most important element about the risk management plan and something that I will keep in mind and carry out in future projects is that the risk identification part of a project is the most important since that sets the ground work for the rest of the projects after this step. It is important to take the time to fully complete the risk identification project and ensure that all risks are identified.  Additionally, the more detailed a risk management plan is, the easier it is to implement it. This is something I would like to focus on on future projects, making the risk management very detailed and taking a good amount of time identifying risks.